[R#186] T#198/T#199 - The Last Release Candidate - Patch Notes

Dear Runners,

UPDATE - Hotfix T#199:
A typo in the psi usage calculation resulted in all weapons requiring psi. This has been fixed. In addition we lowered the psi requirements of all spells by 20%, so the equation now reads: techlevel*20.0f / frequency

Below are the full combined patch notes for R#186 aka "The Balancing Patch". These notes have been restructured and combined to show the full impact of this patch against the current Titan State of R#185. This includes some final changes made in R#186-T#198(Release Candidate 7), these are highlighted in bold italics. We have chosen to do this to bring your attention to all aspects of this patch, not just the final changes.

This is a land mark occasion as it brings the results of many months of hard work to the finish line - next stop Titan!

Remember that this is just Phase One of the overall Balancing Project. Work does not stop here. We'll have more details about the next phase in the coming weeks.

Please join us in the Discussion Thread to deliver your final feedback on the below changes - before we repackage the numerous incremental patches ready for deployment to Titan Soon™.

Combined Patch Notes R#186-T#186 through R#186-T#198 (RC7)

TECHNICAL UPDATES & BUG FIXES
NETWORK SETTINGS

• Changed the use of USELOCALPORT in 'path/to/neocron/ini/updater.ini':
  
  • USELOCALPORT=0 now randomises the port on every client launch
  • USELOCALPORT=1 means using a predefined port via LOCALPORT=xxx
• The availability of port randomisation allows multiple clients to be launched (dual logging) without player intervention.

OUTPOST TURRETS

• Outpost Turrets are available for use and purchase once again.
• Outpost Turrets no longer move/slide when fired upon or damaged.
• Outpost Turrets can no longer be placed inside of each other.

NPCs

• Display of NPC dialogue when talking directly to an NPC has been revamped, this includes a new RPOS background image.
• CopBot AI has been updated to include previously deactivated and unused audio. CopBots use this audio when ending dialogues, pursuing players, killing players, and upon losing their target.
• Wandering NPCs with the PMAN AI now stop and face the player when talking or trading with them.
• Wandering NPCs with the PMAN AI now correctly greet runners.
• Wandering NPCs with the PMAN AI now only flee from players with weapons and not other NPCs such as CopBots.
• Static NPCs with the WAITER AI now correctly hide/duck to "evade" players with weapons.
• NPCs that use the WAITER and PMAN AI scripts will be introduced in future patches to increase atmosphere in the gameworld.

TECHNICAL

• Client.exe now has an appropriate icon, players who use Windowed Mode will be able to more readily identify the Neocron Client
• Added New configuration options to the Hardware Configuration window. Players can now control dynamic lighting of shots, casting of shadows and more!
• Decrease in dynamic light intensity with distance from the light source has been flattened. Dynamic lights now cast light over longer distances.
• Character stats updates should now be enforced right after synchronising.
• Due to the significant re-factoring of underlying code, some particle effects (weapon shots, explosions etc) now look slightly different.
• Calculation of the effective frequency for weapons in the item information window should be fixed.
• Root cause of common "Bad World Data" bug identified and fixed server-side. Existing temporary work around has been removed.
• Server health reporting services have been added server-side to assist with monitoring of the game server.
• World host tracking has been added server-side for better identification of sectors which run into difficulty.

MISCELLANEOUS

• When leaving a clan Runners will keep their own sympathy rating toward the faction, instead of inheriting the Clan sympathy rating.
• Locked messages for Gene Replicators, Venture Warps, Apartment Interfaces and Vendors have been updated.
• Players are no longer kicked for being AFK with a drone in flight. You will still be kicked for being AFK if the drone becomes idle.
• Behaviour of AoE weapons has been updated to prevent abuse by LE equipped players.
• Frequency values shown in weapon info windows have been fixed.
• Instant death after zoning out of HackNet should be fixed.
• The update rate of health and damage related packages has been increased to decrease the number of players dying due to heart attacks while hunting.

BALANCE PROJECT: PHASE ONE
ALL WEAPONS

• The frequency of weapons has been fixed for each weapon. Weapon frequency is no longer based on the player's skill point setup.
• Characteristics of weapons - frequency, shot count, handling, etc. - have been left untouched unless otherwise stated.
• Aggressive damage over time effects - contamination, fire, x-ray, poison and energy stacks - have been reworked and should now work as intended.
• Damage output of all weapons is now balanced according to Tech Level.
• Weapons with the same tech level from the same category - pistol, rifle, etc. - should now do the same amount of damage per minute/second, this is now independent of whether they do damage over time or instantly.
• Player vs Player damage has been lowered by a factor ~2
• Damage output (both PvP & PvE) of AoE weapons has been lowered by a factor of ~2
• Compared to the damage per minute/second of Heavy Combat Weapons:
  
  • Drones do 10% less damage.
  • Melee Weapons do 7.5% more damage
  • Pistols and Rifles do 10% more damage
  • APU Spells do 15% more damage
• All Weapons now receive an additional damage boost of at most 2.5% based on their aiming speed
• All Weapons now receive an additional damage boost of at most 2.5% based on the number of shots in a burst
• Damage types introduced by different weapon modifications have been equalized. Modified weapons deal the same amount of damage as unmodified weapons, the modification causes damage to be divided across damage types.

PISTOL, RIFLE & HEAVY COMBAT

• Beam weapons should now work exactly as burst weapons do.
• The behavior of bursts have been fixed.
  
  • Instead of a monotonous pew, pew, pew, pew... burst weapons should now do a pew, pew, pew, wait, pew, pew, etc... again
• Clip size differences between 'Rare' and 'Normal' weapons have been removed.
• Disruptor burst lowered to 3 instead of 4 shots
• Reticule closing speed of the Disruptor has been lowered
• Removed the range effect from Devourer-like, Ray of God-like and Lightbringer-like weapons
• Fixed a bug in the damage balancing for shotguns

DRONE COMBAT

• Drones deal less damage (as above) as Droners do not need to engage in combat situations physically, they only engage in combat remotely via their drones.

MELEE COMBAT

• Aiming for Melee weapons has been changed to mirror APU damage calculations, see below for details.

GENERAL PSI

• High frequency spells should now work as intended
  
• PSI use has been changed to operate with a new calculation, see below for details.
• A minor bug in the calculation of the casting time for spells has been fixed

PASSIVE PSI

• PSI Shields have been rebalanced
• PSI Heals have been rebalanced
• Duration of single target, sanctum and group PSI Heals has halved (60 to 30 seconds).
  
  • With the move of anti-shielding spells from PPU back to APU, PPUs lost a lot of their workload.
• Removed the healing effect from all applicable tiers of the following spells:
  
  • Anti Contamination
  • Anti Energy
  • Anti Poison
  • Anti Fire
  • Anti X-Ray
  • Holy Catharsis
• All applicable tiers of the following spells are now classed as passive by NPCs and can be used in Safe Zones:
  
  • AntiPoison
  • AntiFire
  • AntiEnergy
  • AntiXray
  • AntiContamination
  • AntiParalyse
  • DamageBlocker
  • Holy Catharsis
  • Holy Exorcist

AGGRESSIVE PSI

• The frequency of several single target APU spells has been increased, primarily of those which previously had a very low frequency, like e.g. the holy lightning or the fire apocalypse
• Frequency of all APU spells has been raised
• APU aiming correction has been changed, see below for details.
• All applicable tiers of the following spells have been moved back to APU from PPU:
  
  • Anti Deflector
  • Anti Absorber
  • Anti Protector
  • Anti Heal
  • Holy Unprotector
  
  
• Casting time of the "Holy Unprotector" has been changed to 4 seconds
• Casting time of the "Anti Protector/Absorber/Deflector/Heal" spells have been changed to:
  
  • 3.5 seconds for the normal version
  • 3 seconds for the blessed version
  • 2 secondsfor the holy version

HACKNET SOFTWARE

• Duration of HackNet heal effects has also been halved (60 seconds instead of 120 seconds)
• HackNet weapons/shields/heals have been balanced according to the same rules as other weapons/shields/heals

NANITES & NANTIE TOOLS

• Nanite tools have been balanced according to the same rules as their PSI counterparts.
• Nanite and psi heals on the same tl should now be en par

NPC/MOB DAMAGE

• An additional damage boost given to NPCs/Mobs based on their level has been removed. This is now achieved by the Tech Level dependence of weapons.

ADDITIONAL BALANCE CHANGE INFORMATION

AoE Weapons: All AoE weapons (psi barrels, psi multi target bolts, rocket/grenade launchers, ray gun and fusion cannons) with the exceptions of Ball Blast Spells have been altered and rebalanced in line with their Tech Level. Ball Blast Spells have been excluded for now. We need to know whether some AoE suffer too much or whether some do not suffer enough from this change! Please compare the damage output of e.g. barrels to comparable single target spells at around the same Tech Level.

Aiming Speed Correction: Aiming speed is now based on a multiplicative correction calculated as follows: correction = 1 + 0.025f * ((highestAimSpeed - w.AimingSpeed) / aimingSpeedDifference), where aimingSpeedDifference denotes the aiming speed difference between the weapon with the highest aiming speed and the lowest and w.AimingSpeed denotes the aiming speed of the current weapon to be balanced.

APU Aiming Correction: Previously the APU did 65% of his intended damage by default if "his aim was closed less than 65%", if it was closed further he did more damage, up to 100% if it was fully closed. This had been implemented to compensate for the fact that compared to other weapons, the APU's casts would not miss their target. We have changed this as follows: the baseline damage output of the APU is now 90% instead of 65%. Depending on how much his reticule is closed when starting the cast, this will increase to 100% if the APU's aim is fully closed.

Melee Aiming Correction: Melee damage calculation now works the same as APU damage calculation. The actual damage now depends on the closure of the player's reticule and gets multiplied by a factor: 0.90f + 0.1f * max(min(ReticuleClosure * 0.01f, 1.0f), 0.0f), where ReticuleClosure is given in percent.

PSI Usage Calculation: PSI usage is now calculated using the following formula: techlevel*25.0f / frequency

Burst Correction: is a multiplicative correction calculated as follows: correction = 1 + 0.025f * ( 1 + (w.shotCount - highestBurstCount) / burstDifference), where an analogous naming convention has been used.

State of HackNet: According to the few reports we have so far received, HackNet is rather messed up. Whether it will remain this way when this patch hits retail will mainly depend on two things: our time schedule and your HackNet testing efforts. If everyone agrees that we can safely ignore HackNet throughout phase one, we will ignore it and not spend time on it until later in the whole project.

Balancing Project: Phase Two: Phase two will be delivered faster than phase one. Balancing patches as well as patches in general will move to smaller sizes in the future, so we can iterate more often! This is due to the ground work we have put in place during this extended development period and time we have invested in the production of our tool set.

Details on how to get the resistance values for your shields, as well as how and what to test can be found in Bragi's post.

How to cap your character on Vedeena

Sincerely,
Your Neocron Support Team